Those of you saying games like Dawn of War and Company of Heroes really make me feel old as in my head I still count them as "New upstarts to the classics"
With that off my chest, I've always been a big fan of RTS games despite being absolutely crap at them (especially now turtling is purposely made harder now) so my list is pretty long.
Age of Empires (all 3): These hold a lot of fond memories for me partly because they were the 1st game I got when we updated from Windows 3.11 to 98 and partly because it was the 1st game I ever played over the internet. I had to warn my parents I'd be tying up the phone line and after about 30mins of playing with settings, 3 mates and I all got into a game together. So much fun.
Age of Mythology: This is a game developers need to take notice of more. Considering how much just one game got out of myths and legends, its surprising more games don't try it. It was also a nice way of adding C&C style super-weapons without breaking the historical settings. It also had one of the better storylines in an RTS.
C&C (all of them): I LOVED!! these games with Tiberium Sun being the first game I remember effectivly camping out for. I much prefered the building style in this to how AoE and Warcraft did it despite being less realistic. It was also the 1st game I ever tried the map editor on and my mate and I used to specifically create levels to play with infinite resources to blow each other up on over a Null Modem connection. RA 2 was definitely the height of the series.
Rise of Nations/Legends: Rise of Nations felt like the bastard love child of AoE and Risk and it was wonderful! Rise of Nations took the history of AoE and expanded on it brilliantly and the idea of the world map is again somethinng more RTS's need to steal. Rise of Legends felt a bit weird, but you'll never see a more varied set of races and units outside of Starcraft and tbh, I think RoLs were better. Who can hate a game where you have Steam-Punk fighting against Magic and Stone-Tech(tm). Like Age of Mythology, this is another avenue of game play that no-one seems to touch, but has a lot of promise.
Shogun: Total War: My overwhelming memory of this game was having an army of geishas killing off all the enemy generals so I could just walk in and take the land.
Total Annihilation: I hardly played this game. I missed it when it 1st came out and by the time I discovered it I'd played other RTS's and just couldn't get into it. Please forgive me internet.
Supreme Commander: The EPIC scale RTS to end them all. I love everything about this game. The unit scale, the rock/paper/scissor nature of the units, YOU CAN TURTLE EFFECTIVELY!!!, the interwoven storylines and a final mission (expansion only) where you can build all 3 factions units and buildings. Sometimes I install this just to load up that mission and go stompy again. Pity the sequal screwed things up. It also holds the crown for being the only game that uses multi-monitor set-ups to good use. Having it so one was the zoomed out strategic overview and the other was the zoomed in tactical unit view really helped the immersion and the feeling you really are in charge on an army.
Homeworld(2): I want to play this, but my PC has a hissy fit when I try running it at max settings for some reason and decideds to show it to me as a slideshow.
With that off my chest, I've always been a big fan of RTS games despite being absolutely crap at them (especially now turtling is purposely made harder now) so my list is pretty long.
Age of Empires (all 3): These hold a lot of fond memories for me partly because they were the 1st game I got when we updated from Windows 3.11 to 98 and partly because it was the 1st game I ever played over the internet. I had to warn my parents I'd be tying up the phone line and after about 30mins of playing with settings, 3 mates and I all got into a game together. So much fun.
Age of Mythology: This is a game developers need to take notice of more. Considering how much just one game got out of myths and legends, its surprising more games don't try it. It was also a nice way of adding C&C style super-weapons without breaking the historical settings. It also had one of the better storylines in an RTS.
C&C (all of them): I LOVED!! these games with Tiberium Sun being the first game I remember effectivly camping out for. I much prefered the building style in this to how AoE and Warcraft did it despite being less realistic. It was also the 1st game I ever tried the map editor on and my mate and I used to specifically create levels to play with infinite resources to blow each other up on over a Null Modem connection. RA 2 was definitely the height of the series.
Rise of Nations/Legends: Rise of Nations felt like the bastard love child of AoE and Risk and it was wonderful! Rise of Nations took the history of AoE and expanded on it brilliantly and the idea of the world map is again somethinng more RTS's need to steal. Rise of Legends felt a bit weird, but you'll never see a more varied set of races and units outside of Starcraft and tbh, I think RoLs were better. Who can hate a game where you have Steam-Punk fighting against Magic and Stone-Tech(tm). Like Age of Mythology, this is another avenue of game play that no-one seems to touch, but has a lot of promise.
Shogun: Total War: My overwhelming memory of this game was having an army of geishas killing off all the enemy generals so I could just walk in and take the land.
Total Annihilation: I hardly played this game. I missed it when it 1st came out and by the time I discovered it I'd played other RTS's and just couldn't get into it. Please forgive me internet.
Supreme Commander: The EPIC scale RTS to end them all. I love everything about this game. The unit scale, the rock/paper/scissor nature of the units, YOU CAN TURTLE EFFECTIVELY!!!, the interwoven storylines and a final mission (expansion only) where you can build all 3 factions units and buildings. Sometimes I install this just to load up that mission and go stompy again. Pity the sequal screwed things up. It also holds the crown for being the only game that uses multi-monitor set-ups to good use. Having it so one was the zoomed out strategic overview and the other was the zoomed in tactical unit view really helped the immersion and the feeling you really are in charge on an army.
Homeworld(2): I want to play this, but my PC has a hissy fit when I try running it at max settings for some reason and decideds to show it to me as a slideshow.
